The approaches described in this section could be pursued but are not necessarily approaches that have previously been conceived or pursued. Therefore, unless otherwise indicated, it should not be assumed that any of the approaches described in this section qualify as prior art merely by virtue of their inclusion in this section.
Regular service load balancers such as server load balancers, application delivery controllers, and traffic managers, typically distribute a load among a plurality of servers providing network services such as web documents, voice calls, advertisements, enterprise applications, video streaming services, file transfers, gaming, or various broadband services. A network service is associated with an IP address. In an IP network, an IP address is assigned to a network device. Network routers and switches are designed to forward data packets addressed to the IP address to the assigned network computing device. However, currently, the same IP address cannot be assigned to multiple network computing devices connected with network routers and switches.
When a service provider deploys a network service, the service provider needs to take into account changes in client demand from high demand to low demand. In one scenario, a software vendor provides software patches on a regular basis. Normally, a single service load balancer is capable of handling software patch download demand.
For example, when a software vendor rolls out a major software update, the software vendor should anticipate a dramatic increase in download demand shortly after the major software update is released. To handle the increasing demand, the software vendor can plan to add two additional service load balancers and four more patch servers. The software vendor could use different IP addresses for the additional service load balancers. However, this solution would require the client devices to learn the new IP addresses before requesting the software update service.
After a day of the major software update release, the software vendor experiences a substantial decline in service demand. The software vendor can remove some added service load balancers and patch servers. The client devices need to re-acquire the IP address of the remaining service load balancer in order to use the software patch service.
It is therefore desirable that there is a need to provide a scalable dynamic service network to distribute service sessions to a plurality of service load balancers according to a service address.